Slice

To me this is a tribute to the songs that brought people together, from all different "slices" of the population...maybe back before genres had so divided what people were listening to. The bridge seems to me like it could be making specific references...Band on the Run, Moondance, and Summer Breeze are what I thought of immediately, although I didn't recognize what "top-down lovers" would refer to. And of course American Pie is the main one. But this song, which mentions blogs and online-only friendships, seems very relevant in the age when everyone has their own iPod they're listening to. Maybe he's just wishing people would share music more directly.

On the band's website it says the song is about a daydream that all of us have, of when we wish we lived in a simpler time and when the songs were bigger.

The melody alone in this song is amazing, along with just about all, if not all, of the songs on this album. And, of course, the meaning is great, especially in a time of so many meaningless lyrics and tunes. Love it.

this song awesome.... full fire of the POSITIVE SPIRIT....not just for American people but for people all around the world

make me tough and strong to face this life without fear.... just have fun with self creativity and share them among other for better life for the world

5 for fighting always burn my spirit...

I think this song does have to do with music and how in this day and age it's not as meaningful, but I think the underlying meaning is broader. He's singing about how there was a greater sense of community in our country when life was simpler. The first few stanzas describe life back then, and how "we were everyone" in that me would have to go out and see other people and interact with them every day of our lives. These two stanzas show how life is now:

Have you read my blog today? Three hundred million little USA's Your doorstep is just a click away We'll get together one of these days

How can you be as nice as me? You're not from the same slice as me Where do we go from here my friend? Is this the way our story ends?

The second line describes how we've been divided into millions of different "slices." These slices probably made up of a group not much larger than one family, or it could even be a single person. The third lines describes how we get almost all our socialization from the internet, which is truly a poor excuse for relations in the real world. Our individual lives are segregated from the society as a whole, and everything such as cellphones and office type jobs are geared toward this kind of thing. The first two lines in the second stanza illustrate how we are prejudiced against anyone who we don't really know.

He applies this sense of separation to music and how people listened to it, which the above comments picked up on.

It's about the changing world.

Music isn't what it used to be. Songs and artist have become flavor of the month trash that we just throw away. This carries over to the rest of the United States. We have become 300,000,000 nations of one person instead of one nation of 300,000,000 people.

I've been on a Five for Fighting kick recently, and this song made its way into my iTunes. I must say I was pleasantly surprised (not that all of his songs aren't amazing as well). I think this song is about how much America has changed in just fifty years or so. Things used to be so much simpler and easier, and everyone was united. Now it's one nation divided up into millions of "slices" in our great big "American pie". It's paying tribute to the way things USED to be and showing how things COULD be eventually. I love this song. :)

Really nice song. Five for Fighting's strong suit has always been making these soulful songs and singing from the heart, whether it be joy or sadness, they never get riled up and crazy. This song's meaning can mean different things to different people, unity, friendship, evolution of the human race, cultures, I just find it really fun to listen to, very good vocals and a production that's almost too sad for its own good. A great song nonetheless.

It's basically a nostalgia kick, a kind of "gosh, things sure were better back in my day" song. I hear this song at work, sometimes several times a day, and have never really been all that impressed with it. When people look back at the way things were they tend to don a pair of rose-tinted glasses and forget the problems that were there and only look at the good. A lot of the time things only seemed simpler or better, usually because at the time said person was unaware of some of the darker sides of life. Glorifying the past is something that every generation seems to do at some point, and it's usually not justified.

Fifty years ago the civil rights movement was still going on and African Americans (and other minorities) were still openly discriminated against. America was in the middle of the Vietnam War...life was not all moonbeams and sunshine, unless you were a kid too young to understand what was going on around you. It was an incendiary time in American history, a time when this nation was far more fractious than it is today...despite the song writer's belief that cell phones and blogs create division.

If anything we haven't changed at all. The only difference between people now and people than is that we have more things to lose ourselves in than they did back then. But is that really a negative thing? People are no more divisive than they were back then, we just have more way of expressing our differences.

Of course, I have no idea what part of the past the song writer is actually talking about; I took fifty years from someone else's comment and used it to show that were not as great back then as has been implied. Pick an era and I'll demonstrate that things were not as idyllic as nostalgic old timers would like us to believe.

And for the record, we have never been anything other than a slice of American pie.